Caleb Kommandant Banishment House

Caleb Humalebe (“Commandant”) Motshabi was born on the 5th of November 1923 in Bethanie (a location had existed in Waaihoek). The third child of the late Solomon Batshabeng and Maria Panyane Motshabi, he grew up in the Batho Township in Mangaung and attended school at St Bernard Primary School where he completed his Standard Six during the 1930s. At the age of 16 years, at the outbreak of the Second World War, Caleb enlisted in the South African Army as a member of the Native Labour Contingent which rendered support services to the South African troops, as well as to fight the Nazis who were on a quest for world dominion. 

He saw action in various theatres of war, including Germany, Italy, and North Africa. After the war, he received a medal for services during the war (1939-45). After the end of the war, he returned home Motshabi joined the African National Congress (ANC) in 1949. During the Defiance of Unjust Laws Campaign in 1952, he was the volunteer-in-chief for the Free State campaign, and was detained for ten days without any option for a fine, for deliberately defying the racially-based laws. During this period, detainees were subjected to brutal physical abuse by the apartheid police. He participated in the 1955 Congress of the People in Kliptown, Soweto where the Freedom Charter was drafted. 

In 1961, he became the Free State commander of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK). He was arrested in 1963 and jailed for 12 years on Robben Island. In 1975 he was released but immediately banished to, and placed under house arrest, in Thaba Nchu in the Free State. However, house arrest did not deter him from his mission to liberate the people of South Africa. During the 1970s he steadfastly recruited young activists, mostly from the Bloemfontein area, into the ANC. He facilitated their travel to Lesotho where the ANC had substantial presence. The link between Bloemfontein and Lesotho was to be the primary axis of ANC and MK activity in the Free State. Motshabi served as a mentor, role model and father figure to many of the youth he recruited and gave political education. 

The lack of institutions of higher learning in the province at the time saw him encouraging young revolutionaries to gain formal education outside the province. Some of the renowned Free State activists who acquired higher education included Janie Mohapi, who studied at the then University of the North (now called University of Limpopo) in Turfloop, Max Makhubelo (University of Fort Hare), Oupa Molema (University of the North), Fezile Dabi (University of Fort Hare) and Terror Lekota (University of the North).

Many seasoned members of the ANC and political activists remember Motshabi with fondness in his assistance that saw them cross borders to Lesotho to get political education and a crash course in different military activities. Caleb remained a parliamentarian until his death in 2000.